It’s not often that I rely upon the Cato Institute to fact check a Democratic Senator, but then Joe Lieberman is a special case, isn’t he. Here’s an excerpt from his op-ed in the Washington Post today in which he makes the case that the biggest, baddest enemy we are fighting in Iraq is Al Qaeda:
The suicide bombings we see now in Iraq are … a deliberate, calculated counteroffensive led foremost by al-Qaeda, the same network of Islamist extremists that perpetrated catastrophic attacks in Kenya, Indonesia, Turkey and, yes, New York and Washington.
Indeed, to the extent that last week’s bloodshed clarified anything, it is that the battle of Baghdad is increasingly a battle against al-Qaeda. Whether we like it or not, al-Qaeda views the Iraqi capital as a central front of its war against us.
Al-Qaeda’s strategy for victory in Iraq is clear. It is trying to kill as many innocent people as possible in the hope of reigniting Shiite sectarian violence and terrorizing the Sunnis into submission.
In other words, just as Petraeus and his troops are working to empower and unite Iraqi moderates by establishing basic security, al-Qaeda is trying to divide and conquer with spectacular acts of butchery.
Yes, Al Qaida represents the only real threat to peace breaking out in Iraq. If we back down now and withdraw our troops Al Qaida will have won a great victory. At least, that’s true if you can believe what Joe Lieberman, the man who remains an eternal optimist whenever he is asked to describe how things are going “over there,” has to say on the matter. The only teeny-weeny problem with Lieberman’s premise that Al Qaida is the only “real enemy” we face in Iraq is that it’s complete and utter bullshit, as this report, The Myth of an al Qaeda Takeover in Iraq (dated January 31, 2007), by Ted Galen Carpenter for the Cato Institute makes abundantly clear:
(cont.)
Despite [scare mongering like that promoted by Senator Lieberman], it is highly improbable that al Qaeda could use Iraq as the kind of safe haven it enjoyed in Afghanistan. There, the organization had the protection of an entrenched, friendly government, which it will not have in Iraq. Al Qaeda also had a much larger force in Afghanistan — an estimated 18,000 fighters. Even the U.S. government concedes that there are fewer than 2,000 al Qaeda fighters in Iraq, and the Iraq Study Group put the figure at only 1,300.
Indeed, foreign fighters make up a relatively small component of the Sunni insurgency against the U.S. and British occupation forces. It strains credulity to imagine 1,300 fighters (and foreigners at that) dominating a country of 26 million people.
The challenge for al Qaeda in Iraq would be even more daunting than those raw numbers suggest. While the organization has some support among Sunni Arabs there, opinion even among that segment of the population is surprisingly negative.
A September 2006 poll conducted by the University of Maryland’s prestigious Program on International Policy Attitudes found that 94 percent of Iraqi Sunnis had a somewhat or highly unfavorable attitude toward al Qaeda.
As the violence of al Qaeda attacks has mounted, and the victims are increasingly Iraqis, not Americans, many Sunnis have turned against the terrorists. There have been a growing number of reports during the past year of armed conflicts between Iraqi Sunnis and foreign fighters.
And the anemic Sunni support for al Qaeda is overshadowed by the intense Shiite and Kurdish hostility to the group. Almost to a person, they loathe al Qaeda. The PIPA poll showed that 98 percent of Shiite respondents and 100 percent of Kurdish respondents had somewhat or very unfavorable views of the [Al Qaida] organization.
The notion that a Shiite-Kurdish-dominated government would tolerate Iraq becoming a safe haven for al Qaeda is improbable on its face. Even if U.S. troops left Iraq, the successor government would continue to be dominated by Kurds and Shiites, since they make up more than 80 percent of Iraq’s population. And, in marked contrast to the situation under Saddam Hussein, they now control the military and police.
The truth can be found in strange places sometimes. I find myself in complete agreement on this issue with Mr. Carpenter, even though the conservative-libertarian Cato Institute is not my kind of think tank by a long shot. Nonetheless, Carpenter makes a cogent, fact based argument as to why Iraq is unlikely to ever become a safe harbor for Al Qaida.
Senator Lieberman, on the other hand merely mindlessly repeats Karl Rove’s most recent set of talking points. Bush, Cheney and other administration spokespeople float the spectre of Al Qaida before our eyes at every opportunity, exploiting the tragedy of 911 over and over again in order to prop up the disaster that their murderous policies in Iraq have created. It’s sign of what a sad, sorry spectacle Lieberman has become, that he has been reduced to just another salesman for President Bush’s never ending “War on Terror.”
Memo to Senator Lieberman: the American public is no longer buying the Bush/Cheney/Rove snake oil. Not even the good conservative stalwarts at the Cato Institute, who apparently have more intellectual integrity than you do when it comes to Iraq. Then again, they never got a smooch from Our Dear Leader, like you did. I’m sure that explains why you’re willing to lie on his behalf, and they are not.
